1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image data supervising system used in an image data processing apparatus in which image data derived from an electronic still camera, a video camera and the like are converted into magnetic signals or electric signals, and thereafter recorded on a recording medium for storage.
2. Description of the Related Art
Very recently, electronic still cameras, video cameras and the like have been proposed so as to acquire image data. These appliances employ either magnetic recording mediums such as video floppy disks and video tapes, or electronic recording mediums such as semiconductor memories.
In the electronic still cameras, video cameras, and the like for converting the image data into the corresponding magnetic signals or corresponding electric signals to be recorded on the recording mediums, no definite confirmation can be made as to what image data have been recorded on the recording mediums unless these image data are reproduced on a television monitor, or the like.
Under such a circumstance, the more the quantity of the recorded recording mediums increases, the more the recording medium supervision becomes complex. Thus, cumbersome operations are necessarily required. In specific cases, a large quantity of searching time is needed in order to search a desirable image from the recording medium.
On the other hand, a strong demand is made such that a certain message or the like is additionally applied to the image data which have been produced by operating the electronic still cameras, video cameras, and the like.
To this end, in the conventional floppy disk type electronic still cameras, a queue track for recording the supervising data is additionally provided on the entire recording area of the floppy disk in addition to the image recording track region thereof.
Since, however, the recording capacity of the above-described queue track is rather small as compared with that of the recording track region, any messages for a plurality of image data which have been recorded on the recording track region cannot be recorded on the queue track.
In, on the other hand, the conventional video cameras, the superimposing function capable of superimposing such messages on the recorded image information is specifically provided on some types of video cameras.
However, such video cameras equipped with the superimposing function have the following drawbacks. That is, as the image data are recorded on the recording medium under the condition that the messages have been superimposed, no new message can be inserted into these image data once the photographing operation by the video camera is completed. In addition, the messages which have been superimposed during the photographing operation cannot be deleted, or changed into other messages.